Waiting for Gouda

I don’t know much about relationships, but I do remember this one time…

Years ago, I was dating this girl, and we were known to have our ups and downs. And ups. And then some more downs. We were trudging through a down period one evening, when she looked at me and said, with a particular tone which I immediately recognized as meaning that the next few minutes would not be pleasant:

“What’s that?”

I had no idea what she was talking about (not an entirely uncommon occurence), and expressed as much to her in as sweet a voice as I could muster.

“That!” she said, and pointed at my shoulder.

I looked down at my shoulder and saw something peculiar.

I wasn’t wearing a shirt at the particular instance of this conversation. But that wasn’t the strange part. There was a small but distinctive blemish on my shoulder that looked an awful lot like a hickey. I could tell by the look in her eyes that she, too, thought that it looked an awful lot like a hickey, and furthermore, that she didn’t believe that she was the author of the mark.

As much as it pains me to admit this (which, at this stage of my life isn’t all that much, really) she just might have had certain reasons to maybe be a tad suspicious about marks that look a bit like hickeys appearing on my torso area. Yet, as I stood there, looking back and forth between the incriminating mark and her demanding glare, I could not for the life of me fathom how the mark had gotten there. Of course, no woman in her right mind would ever believe a boyfriend whose reply to a query about a mystery hickey-like blemish is, “I don’t know.” Especially a boyfriend who might have, maybe, perhaps, kind of been known to once or twice a long time ago engage in certain activities with a third party which could, under certain conditions, result in hickeys.

So I hesitated for a few moments, trying to figure out exactly what I was going to say. I’m not sure exactly how long I paused, but it did seem like a little while. I began to wonder if perhaps I actually had made out with someone recently and forgotten about it. It seemed unlikely. But maybe not impossible.

She did not wonder. When I didn’t answer, she became convinced. I can’t remember her exact response, but I’m pretty sure it involved some combination of cursing, throwing one or more household items, striking me with open and/or closed hands, and slamming doors.

It was not until much later on that I realized what had happened. It was a day earlier when I just finished shaving that I noticed a pimple on my shoulder. So, of course, I did what anyone would do… I popped the sucker. This particular pimple started to bleed a little, and I was about to put on my shirt, which happened to be white, so of course I didn’t want to get any blood and/or pus on my white shirt.

Dabbing it didn’t seem to work. Applying pressure for several seconds didn’t seem to work. Apparently this particular zit had tapped into some major artery. It kept bleeding, and I was running late. I was getting a little desperate.

Sure, I suppose that a band-aid might have been a good idea. But I didn’t think of that.

Instead, I tried sucking out the blood. It was positioned just far enough away from my neck that I could reach it, so I figured… hell, why not? And apparently I followed through on this approach with some vigor. And I do believe that it worked. However, I soon forgot about it. And that, my friends, was my downfall.

So take my advice: if you’re gonna suck, remember that you did.